About Me

Hi, I’m Alex.

I build communities, started one of the longest running coworking communities in the world, write a crapload of words every day, tweet a little too much, coach people to be the best version of themselves possible, can't stop learning new things, and do my very best not to take myself too seriously.

I have one goal: to fill the world with truly excellent collaborators so we can all work together, better.

Because let's be honest...most of us aren't very good at it.

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nytimes

To anyone who’s ever asked me why I “bother” to hand code everything instead of work with a WYSIWYG, I’m finally validated by the NY Times design director:

It’s our preference to use a text editor, like HomeSite, TextPad or TextMate, to “hand code” everything, rather than to use a wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) HTML and CSS authoring program, like Dreamweaver. We just find it yields better and faster results.
But really the browser-to-browser consistency that you see (and I have to admit, it’s far from perfect) is the result of a vigilant collaboration between many different groups — the visual designers and technologists in the design team that I lead, their counterparts in our technology staff, and the many, many detail-oriented people who come together to make the site a reality every hour of every day.

While I’m sharing link content relevant to hand coding methodology this morning (since this blog has taken a turn for the philosophical recently), make sure you check out the <em>Confessions</em> of a CSS Developer. Some of my favorites (and own confessions) include:

Everything before IE6 is dead to me

I passionately use the * {margin:0; padding:0} rule. Sometimes I feel rebellious and add border:0

I will seriously cry when all browsers fully support CSS 3

In light of the first half of this post, I’m willing to overlook confession #12 for the sake of the humor/accuracy in rest of them.